AQUASTAT

AQUASTAT is FAO's global water information system, developed by the Land and Water Division. The main mandate of the programme is to collect, analyze and disseminate information on water resources, water uses, and agricultural water management, with an emphasis on countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. This allows interested users to find comprehensive and regularly updated information at global, regional, and national levels.

New product!

All AQUASTAT products can be found using the left navigation menu. Shortcuts to our most popular programme areas containing country-level information are presented below for ease of use:

03/03/2015 - AQUASTAT has updated the renewable water resources assessment methodology. This includes: (i) the elimination of 'actual' versus 'natural' river flow distinction, and (ii) modification of the way border river flows are accounted.

13/02/2015 - New visualizations prepared by AQUASTAT show how irrigation areas are distributed globally and within countries.

15/12/2014 - A new "Did you know…?" section has been created, providing small snippets on water information and infographics!

26/11/2014 - Database queries by country and topic now one click away! Visit our country profiles to obtain both analyses and data.

13/10/2014 - Check out our renewed water resources page, making all available information accessible with one click!

02/10/2014 - "About Us" page is now translated! Please visit to learn more about the programme, its products and its challenges!

26/09/2014 - Metadata provided in the Water Resources Sheets are now linked to the ones in the main country database.

23/09/2014 - Analysts rejoice! AQUASTAT main country database results can now be downloaded in Flat (aka tidy, long, list) format.

19/09/2014 - In an effort to announce substantial changes and/or upates in AQUASTAT to the maximum number of users, AQUASTAT has created a twitter account. This, in addition to the RSS feed and announcements on the front page will be used to announce major news. Users desiring to be kept up to date are encouraged to use the most convenient method.

16/09/2014 - Tables showing global, continental and regional data on water resources, water use and irrigation have been updated.

02/09/2014 - Two thirds of countries get water from others. See AQUASTAT's new Sankey and Network graphs!

17/07/2014 - New profiles and data, as well as updated information on dams, are available for the 12 countries in South America.

10/07/2014 - For "data people", the working paper "Contextual metadata in the AQUASTAT database" is now available for download.

20/06/2014 - The FAO CA group and AQUASTAT have new values for Conservation Agriculture: almost 155 million ha reported globally now!

16/06/2014 - The role of women in agricultural water management: A working paper reflecting on gender-sensitive indicators is now available (in French).

21/05/2014 - FAO-AQUASTAT, in collaboration with IWMI, has completed a major review of municipal wastewater data!

05/05/2014 - The links for the Country Fact Sheets (CFS) and the Water Resources Sheets (WRS) have changed as part of a wider 'asset-ordering' exercise being performed by AQUASTAT. Please update the links if you have these assets bookmarked.

21/03/2014 - To commemorate World Water Day, AQUASTAT is introducing new interactive global maps that are dynamically linked to data, and therefore always updated. Background layers can be changed and clicking on the country gives the value of the indicator. Happy #WWD2014!

07/03/2014 - A new brochure "AQUASTAT - Counting every drop" and an informational note "Understanding AQUASTAT - FAO's global water information system" are now available for download on the Publications page.

21/02/2014 - In order to provide context about the AQUASTAT Programme, a new 'About us' page has been created to give users an overview, as well as information about AQUASTAT's history, the challenges it is facing, a site map, and contact details.

13/02/2014 - Clicking on the country name in the results page of the main AQUASTAT country database brings up the country profile, where available. Contextual information about each country is now only a click away!

19/12/2013 - Around 40 publications can be accessed and downloaded through the AQUASTAT publications page.

07/10/2013 - Global Map of Irrigation Areas (GMIA) Version 5 is now available, including global, regional, national and sub-national information on irrigation areas and sources of water for irrigation.

22/08/2013 - The 'UN-Water Country Briefs' pilot project, implemented by AQUASTAT for UN-Water, has been finalized. As planned, 13 briefs have been produced and are now available on the project page. They will be launched during the World Water Week in Stockholm on 05/09/2013.

05/07/2013 - Geo-referenced database on dams for Africa and Middle East has been updated, and dams for Central Asia, Southern and Eastern Asia, Europe, Oceania and Northern America have been added. Country level dams have been added in Excel and Google Earth.

25/06/2013 - The query page has been modified to increase user-friendliness and to allow users to modify metadata visibility. The metadata dropdown at the bottom right allows users to select what metadata (if any) is visible in the results page and csv file.

18/06/2013 - Updated country profiles are available for Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. A regional overview is available for Central Asia. An updated river basin profile is available for the Aral Sea basin.

17/05/2013 - Report on irrigation water requirement and withdrawal, based on the major review undertaken and put online in html last year, is now also available in PDF format.

11/03/2013 - The 'click' functionality has been added back to the Google Earth dams files. Please click on a dam in Google Earth to see details.

05/02/2013 - The country profile template has been modified to increase ease of use and consistency between regions. Also, all country products are now accessible through a dropdown menu in the 'Country information' section on the Country, regions, transboundary river basins page.

21/12/2012 - A major review of irrigation water requirement and withdrawal has been undertaken for 167 countries and detailed irrigated crop calendars have been prepared. The improved methodology used has made it possible to show additional variables in the database.

11/12/2012 - Wastewater variables have been substantially reviewed and updated. Additional wastewater variables have been created in the database, new data included and existing data reviewed. Metadata will become available soon. A section on this website dedicated to the topic 'Wastewater' is also available.

22/08/2012 - Water Report 37 'Irrigation in Southern and Eastern Asia in figures: AQUASTAT Survey – 2011' is now available.

16/07/2012 - The AQUASTAT database now shows categorized data-point metadata. Metadata contains caveats and/or additional information for that specific data-point. This implementation can be considered to be in beta. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or identify any problems with this specific implementation.

21/03/2012 - The Key Water Indicator Portal, developed by AQUASTAT for UN-Water, has been released. The portal provides a simple interface to view the latest values for UN-Water Indicators, which include AQUASTAT statistics. Visit the portal today!

08/03/2012 - The AQUASTAT database symbol scheme has changed to provide more information to users, and for consistency with developing FAO initiatives.

17/01/2012 - Metadata on the AQUASTAT database are now available, organized according to the EURO-SDMX structure. Users are encouraged to visit this page, since it answers several 'Frequently Asked Questions'.

09/12/2011 - The FAO Conservation Agriculture (CA) group has gathered updated country data and AQUASTAT, as the repository for this information, has updated its database accordingly. These data also are displayed directly on the FAO-CA page, of which the link is given here.

10/11/2011 - In addition to the English version, the Arabic version of Water Report 34 'Irrigation in the Middle East region in figures: AQUASTAT Survey – 2008' is now available.

26/09/2011 - Land and Water Discussion Paper No 9 'Monitoring agricultural water use at country level - Experiences of a pilot project in Benin and Ethiopia' and its four annexes have been added to the publications section.

15/07/2011 - Information on a selection of current initiatives undertaken by the AQUASTAT team can be found on the AQUASTAT home page, and more details can be found on the 'Activities' page.

11/07/2011 - Four transboundary river basin profiles have been added to the 'Countries, regions, transboundary river basins' webpage.

25/06/2011 - The proceedings of the expert workshop on water resources and use assessment methodologies in Latin America have been published.

10/06/2011 - The 'spatial data' and 'maps' pages have been redesigned to provide easier access to geographically referenced thematic information and national, continental, global, hydrological basin and river maps.

07/06/2011 - AQUASTAT has contributed to the Global Reservoirs and Dams (GRanD) database. Kindly refer to the geo-referenced dam databases page for details.

09/05/2011 - The 'Countries, regions, transboundary river basins' page has been redesigned to provide easier access to national, regional and river basin information.

29/04/2011 - Article on thermoelectric water withdrawal is now available on the water use page.

15/03/2011 - Geo-referenced database on African dams has been updated and the database for dams in the Middle East dams has been added.

14/02/2011 - In addition to information related to agricultural water use, information related to municipal and industrial water use is now available on the water use page.

03/02/2011 - In addition to the English, French and Spanish glossaries, now also the Chinese, Russian, and Arabic glossaries are available.

30/11/2010 - Updated global, continental and regional information is available in the global tables on the maps and tables page.

28/10/2010 - Updated country profiles (2010) are available for Brunei Darussalam, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Nepal.

12/10/2010 - Article on groundwater use for irrigation - a global inventory, published in the HESS Journal, has been added to the publications section. In the beginning of 2011, data will become available in the global irrigation map section.

14/09/2010 - Article on water use terminology in AQUASTAT has been added to the publications section.

24/08/2010 - Water-related investment envelopes and project portfolios for all African countries have been uploaded.

15/07/2010 - Updated country profiles (2010) are available for Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand.

17/06/2010 - The AQUASTAT home page has been changed to include the shortcut section.

01/06/2010 - Materials from the workshop on water resource and use assessment methodologies (Santiago, Chile, December 2009) have been uploaded here.

26/03/2010 - The main online database can now be browsed in English, French and Spanish, and queries can be made by country and by region.

15/01/2010 - The country fact sheets and country water balance sheets are now directly connected to the database and therefore always reflect the most updated information.

Your access to AQUASTAT and use of any of its information or data is subject to the terms and conditions laid down in theUser Agreement.